A.C. Smith. The squat lekythos, albeit one with broader proportions, is favored by the painters in the Cleveland Group. Further this vase indicates other characteristics of the work attributed to that group: columnar drapery on standing women, beaded sphendone and jewellery, and white, blobby rocks used as seats or supports. The treatment of subsidiary ornament and the palmette under the handle are also similar, although the Cleveland Group preferred the 1 1/2 superimposed palmettes on such squat lekythoi. For a similar single palmette and other related decoration see also 26/68b and other works by the closely related Group of the Trieste Askoi, which, like the Reading squat lekythos, are plain beneath the main zone (whereas the Cleveland Group usually includes a wave band beneath the main zone).

A.C. Smith prefers to attribute this vase to the Zaandam Group or one the other workshops of the Iliupersis Painter and the followers of the Hoppin Painter, who specialised in small, plain style pots. For comparanda in the Zaandam Group, 'closely connected' to the work of the Zaandam Painter (according to Cambitoglou and Trendall, RVAp 1.289) see Adolphseck 175-176 (RVAp 11/30-31) and Once London Market, Folio Fine Art (RVAp 1.32). I. McPhee prefers the Liverpool Group: for shape and ornament cf. Naples 669 (RVAp 2, 21/355a) and Wellcome R 1936.324 (RVAp 2, 21/372a) but figures are more akin to the latter, which is classed in group (iv). The white ivy wreath, with incised stems, on the body, is particularly common in this group, and especially well preserved on Dresden H 4. 29/90 (RVAp 2, 21/369).

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